The details of the meeting between Nigerian governors and officials of the World Bank in Abuja on Wednesday have emerged. Addressing newsmen in Abuja, the Chairman of the Governors' Forum and Governor of Ekiti state, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, said the governors at the meeting looked at its engagements with the bank especially subsisting portfolio and reviewed things that they were doing right.
He noted that the World Bank had been a major partner of the forum in the development programmes of all the states, stressing that the meeting also reviewed thing the state governors needed to improve on and how they needed to accelerate deployment of resources available within the portfolio for states.
According to him, the bank is spending somewhere in the region of $4 billion in states. Some of our states are benefiting from a range of grants, even loans on the basis of the bank’s investments in our states.
“These are with long term moratorium and with low interest over a long period of time to offset those loan portfolios. So, it is important for us to work on that engagement both in terms of the lending operations, in terms of adversary activities, and in terms of the concrete action in our states.
“I don’t know of many developments partners that have programmes in 36 states, the world bank does,”
He further said there was also a question of not having enough resources and the need to expand the lending portfolio from what it is now, both to the federal government and the sub-national entity.
“It is absolutely important that those vehicles are not closed because if we can borrow from the World Bank at one percent interest it is always going to be better for us than for us to be borrowing at 25 percent commercial lending rate.”
Also speaking, the World Bank Country Director in Nigeria, Rachid Benmessaoud, said the bank’s mission in the country was to fight poverty and build prosperity.
“Our priorities, during our engagement with the governors was around investing in human capital, investing in people to have access to basic education, health services, social protection.
“However, we do recognize that the development challenges also require investing in infrastructure and filling the large infrastructure gaps. We want to make sure that those infrastructure gaps are filled by bringing more of the private sector that will create the physical space for governors to invest in human capital including financing from development partners like the World Bank.
” But most importantly to increase the domestic revenue mobilization for providing primary spending on the social sector,” he said.
